Modern Painters

queer liberation. But theirs is a new breedof queer sound and space, tradingnotions of the utopian safe space that’ssequestered from the violence to whichnonnormative bodies are subjected for onethat acknowledges that violence and seeksanyway to encourage movement andcommunion. Her newest release, DemonCity, out this summer on Break WorldRecords, is a collaborative document ofthis network.“I was taught at an early age thatmobility is key to survival,” Crampton writesto me in an e-mail from NorthernCalifornia; she recently relocated fromPacajes, Bolivia—she is Bolivian-American—to help care for her grandmother.She notes that such changes of place areLQÁXHQFHGE\DQHHGWRIROORZ ́ZRUNDQGRUstability”—while she has lived in theUnited States off and on, it presents, shesays, a particular economic challenge.Indeed, “many are forced into migrationbecause of state, family, and ecologicalviolence.” To some, the club might representa location for the displaced to seekrefuge, or permanence. But Crampton’smusic suggests an elsewhere that’svery much colored by the traces of placeone accumulates along these migratorypatterns. Her attentiveness to hersurroundings is well illustrated in our e-mailexchange, in which she describes theSierra Nevada–adjacent land from whichshe wrote as Cretaceous, replete withcondors. An earthiness or sensitivity toecology is present in her sound, but along-side this she’s also accrued fragmentsof mass culture, and digests the twosimultaneously. The appearance of asampled circa-2004 Lil Jon yelp or a cover ofa Slowdive song on a mix isn’t ironic, oreven really jarring—these moments speakto another kind of landscape that oneencounters while moving in the world.Variegated textural qualities permeateDemon City. Opener “Irreducible Horizon,”with Why Be, layers an anxious piano lineRYHUDVKXIÁLQJFOXEUHDG\SHUFXVVLYHbackbone, but Crampton’s compositions don’tDOZD\VRIIHUVXFKDVWDEOHÁRRU5DWKHUrhythms emerge and recede: In the case of“After Woman,” for example, a swell ofmelody fades in the last 30 seconds to reveala soft beat provided by a high hat that Icould barely tell had been buried there allalong. Such touches draw attention tothe connective tissue between traceablemoments, those unresolved pockets ofsound. As a cycle of strings crescendo onthe interlude “Esposas,” they’re met witha disintegrative crumple and hiss, as wellas bursts of computer-generated air hornand laser sounds.The album is written in the style of an``````epic poem, inspired in part by her recenttheatrical production Dissolution of theSovereign: A Timeslide into the Future,which Crampton describes as a “DJproduction incorporating dialogue andplayacting.” Dissolution, which premieredat Oberlin College in Ohio and toured inEurope this spring, is dedicated toBartolina Sisa, an Aymara heroine whowas executed by Spanish colonialists afterleading an anticolonial uprising inLa Paz in the late 18th century. The work,Crampton says, is rooted in the Aymaraoral tradition and seeks to “stake a claimIRUIXWXULW\VSHFLÀFDOO\LQUHODWLRQWRthe anticolonial queer indigenous struggle.”To say that Crampton’s work is implicitlypolitical might oversimplify how, ormisstate to what end, it has absorbed theviolent histories and struggles forsovereignty to which it alludes. DemonCity is almost entirely instrumental; hertracks that do incorporate lyrics generallyemploy words poetically. On this albumCrampton acts as an abstract storyteller,the compositions’ often challenging sonicaffect guiding listeners along an arc. Partof that affect is a darkness, evenmournfulness. At the end of the dirgelike``````title track, which is streaked throughwith peripheral scraping and shatteringsounds, a canned voice announces that weare in “the darkest hour.” In this group ofsongs, traumatic histories aren’t the onlysource of pain. We also feel the splinteringthat accompanies a project of becoming.But “Red Eyez,” the album’s closer,written by Lexxi, is marked by clarity,a set of insistent melodies interlockingacross an assertive beat. It’s a soundemblematic of the kind of possibilityembedded in Crampton and her cohort’swork; such possibility is located squarelywithin the network of relationships(inter- and intrapersonal) that generateand emerge from these soundscapes. “It’salways been about solidarity,” Cramptonsays, “because solidarity is what allowsWKHPXVLFWRRFFXULQWKHÀUVWSODFHμThis platform, if you will, has a constant,JHQHUDWLYHÁX[ZULWWHQLQWRLWVDNA: “Wehope to inspire new forms of relating,‘becoming-with’ or ‘being-with,’ thatenable more inclusive, de-carceralized,radical forms of transnational,transgeographical, transcorporealcommunity and exchanges of knowledge,agency, and data.” MP``````BLOUINARTINFO.COM JUNE/JULY 2016MODERN PAINTERS 45BREAK WORLD RECORDSCover artdesigned byCramptonfor her new album,Demon City.